


Five Times Aaron’s Soul Tried to Find a Home and One Time It Succeeded

by Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)



Series: Longing and Belonging [5]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Bad Parenting, Drug Use, Family Reunions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 10:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16596338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth
Summary: Aaron is two years old and he remembers nothing.  He pokes the scars on his chest, giggling because he doesn’t know what they mean or how he got them.  He can feel a warm ball in his chest.  He doesn’t know how it got there.  He doesn’t know what it does.  It feels too big for him somehow.  It makes him laugh too loud, or cry too hard, or scream and scream and scream with no comfort.  He reaches out to his mother, to share the warmth with her.  But she looks at him and shivers.  Aaron is two years old when he finds out his mother doesn’t love him.Andrew and Aaron were once one child, torn in two to fulfil a faerie debt. But a human soul cannot be divided and Aaron took it all. Now he is left with a soul he cannot contain and he is looking for someone or something to be his anchor.





	Five Times Aaron’s Soul Tried to Find a Home and One Time It Succeeded

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Five Times Andrew Missed His Soul and One Time He Found It](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12622772) by [Leahelisabeth (fortheloveofcamelot)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofcamelot/pseuds/Leahelisabeth). 



> Written for day 7 of twinyards appreciation week, remix.

**One**

Aaron is two years old and he remembers nothing. He pokes the scars on his chest, giggling because he doesn’t know what they mean or how he got them. He can feel a warm ball in his chest. He doesn’t know how it got there. He doesn’t know what it does. It feels too big for him somehow. It makes him laugh too loud, or cry too hard, or scream and scream and scream with no comfort. He reaches out to his mother, to share the warmth with her. But she looks at him and shivers. Aaron is two years old when he finds out his mother doesn’t love him.

**Two**

Aaron is four years old and he is a monster. He buries his head under the pillow, sobs shaking his thin shoulders. He doesn’t mean to be bad. He doesn’t want to make his mama sad. But it’s hard sometimes when everything is really bright and so loud and the little warm ball just builds and builds inside him until it doesn’t have anywhere to go but out.

He reaches down with shaking fingers to the iron cuff around his ankle. He scratches at the skin underneath, desperate to relieve the burning itch. It just makes things worse. He wonders how long it has been this time. It feels like days but he knows that time moves slow like molasses candy when he is all alone.

He looks up when footsteps sound on the stairs. They are too light to be his mama’s. It’s a boy. He’s taller than Aaron. His hair is dark and curly and he has a smile on his face bigger than any Aaron has seen. Is he lost? 

“Hi Aaron,” the boy says, his grin growing impossibly wider. “I’m your cousin, Nicky.”

“Where’s mama?” Aaron sniffs. “Is she coming back?”

“She had to go away for a while,” Nicky says, his smile never wavering. “But she sent me here to take care of you while she was gone.”

“I’m not a baby,” Aaron pouts.

“I know, but that doesn’t mean you should be alone all the time anyway,” Nicky reaches toward Aaron.

Aaron scuttles backward, scrunching himself tight into the corner of the bed. He can feel that awful wave rising inside him again. “GO AWAY!” he screams as it bursts out of him, ripping his blanket into shreds and bursting his pillow in an explosion of feathers.

After a moment, he looks up to see the damage. The room is torn apart again but Nicky stands there, smile still fixed, hand still outstretched, not even a hair out of place.

“What?” Aaron asks, too shocked to form a real question.

“Oh,” Nicky blushes. “Magic can’t hurt me. That’s why I’m here.” He looks around the room, eyes lighting up when he spied the key. He picks it up and moves toward Aaron.

Aaron flinches back, trying to protect his shackles. “It’s not safe, “ he says. “I’m not safe.”

“I’ll take my chances. “ Nicky shrugs. “We’ll stay out of town if it will make you feel better.”

Thus begins the best afternoon Aaron can remember. They wade in the stream, catching and releasing frogs. Aaron picks flowers and Nicky weaves them into a lopsided crown for his hair. They end up in the trees, climbing high and giggling so hard they shake the branches.

“Are you going to come play with me all the time?” Aaron asks, hugging the trunk of the tree.

“I want to,” Nicky says. “This is a trial run. If this goes well, I’ll be taking care of you every day. You won’t have to be locked up at all.

Aaron’s eyes are wide, this was already the longest amount of time he’d spent out of the basement in months. To think he might not have to deal with it at all. It is a dream come true.

And like most of his dreams, it is too good to be true. Nicky shifts on the branch. An ominous creaking is his only warning before it tears away from the tree, both it and Nicky hurtling toward the ground. Aaron reaches for them with his magic. The tree branch halts in mid air but Nicky hits the ground with a sickening thump.

Nicky doesn’t cry but his face goes white. A strange bump appears midway between his wrist and elbow. Nicky cradles it to his body, strangled whimpers catching in his teeth.

Aaron throws himself out of the tree, his magic cushioning him at the bottom. He helps Nicky up and they begin the long slow walk back toward town.

Everyone gives them a wide berth when they reach the town. Nicky is stumbling, the sounds of pain becoming more pronounced as he loses the ability to suppress them. He manages to guide Aaron to his home before collapsing on the front steps.

Nicky’s mother comes out and starts shrieking. She won’t even come near her son until Aaron has backed at least twenty paces away. She inspects Nicky’s arm and starts wailing as the tears finally broke through Nicky’s control.

“Demon child!” she screams. “You’ve hurt my son! Go back to your pit.”

Aaron wants to stay, to make sure Nicky is okay but his uncle Luther comes out of the house and kneels beside Nicky.

“Sh-shall I fetch the healer,” Aaron asks.

Luther shakes his head grimly. “No healer can touch him.”

And Aaron runs, back to his home, back to his basement, back to his iron shackle and blisters. Even without magic, he still hurts everyone he touches. No one ever even tells him if Nicky is alright.

**Three**

Aaron is six years old and he tries to pretend he is real. He has managed to gain enough control of his magic that Tilda no longer keeps him locked up in the basement. He even goes to school and the teacher lets him sit at the back of the classroom as long as he is wearing an iron necklace. A sweet blonde girl sits three rows ahead of him. Sometimes she turns around and giggles if she catches him looking. He remembers how to smile and he wants, he just wants to be her friend.

He asks her if he can walk her home and she laughs in his face. “I’m only friends with normal people. I don’t talk to freaks,” she says.

And Aaron loses his mind. When he finds it again, the trees have fallen all around them. The earth is scorched and bare. The little girl is curled up in a ball, screaming. She isn’t hurt but her skirt is wet and she stinks of fear and piss.

Tilda beats him. He spends the long winter months shackled up again, pacing the length of his chain for something to do and eating when Tilda remembers to feed him.

**Four**

Aaron is eleven years old and he finds something else to calm the storm inside. Tilda throws him a small woven bag. He opens it. The dry herbs inside make him sneeze. 

“I’ll show you how to use it,” she promises, smiling, and for once it feels like she’s looking at him, looking at him for real. And desperate for her approval, he watches as she places them in a metal bowl, takes a stick from the fire, and sets them alight. They let out a cloud of smoke immediately and Tilda pulls him over the bowl so they’re both breathing in lungfuls of sweet, heady smoke.

Aaron sneezes again but Tilda holds him there until he takes another deep breath. And then he feels it, a fog stealing over his senses, numbing the anger that is an ever present part of him, hiding the loneliness, and loosening the grip of sadness on a heart that still felt too big for his chest.

He reaches for his magic, just to see, and it’s as lazy as he feels, sluggish to react. It doesn’t come when he calls. And Aaron realizes that Tilda has neutered him, made him safe to go out into the world. He should be angry that she refuses to accept him as he is, but everything is lost in the haze.

**Five**

Aaron is fifteen years old and he is lost. Tilda is dead. She kept looking for more and stronger herbs, trying to fill her own emptiness with oblivion. He finds her, cold and rigid by a long-dead fire on a winter morning. Aaron picks up her pouch of herbs, carefully sweeps the ones she has spilled up from the floor and adds them to the pouch. Aaron doesn’t want them, he really doesn’t. Whoever he was before, that person is gone and he thinks he should be angry about that. But he doesn’t know how to stop. He doesn’t know how to go back.

Nicky finds him again. His mother and father had finally had enough. They had endured the stares, the shouts, the stones for years. But then Nicky had the audacity to fall in love with another boy and that they could not forgive.

Sometimes Aaron remembers that four year old boy and in his honour, he loves Nicky as well as he knows how. He is afraid it’s not enough, that Nicky will see how broken he is and leave him too. Maybe if he got rid of the herbs, he could find out what is left of that four year old boy. But he needs them. He breathes in their smoke and his heart calms. He needs this.

Nicky comes home from the market, bruised and bleeding. “There’s someone like you,” he whispers. “His name is Andrew and he saved me.”

**+1**

Aaron is fifteen years old and he is found. He has a brother, a twin, same stature, same blond hair, same damage. Hir forearms are wrapped in iron because his magic is dangerous too. Aaron is not afraid of him. 

He is that four year old little boy again, wondering if it's safe to hope, to reach out. 

Andrew decides for him, palm outstretched, waiting for Aaron to meet him halfway. Andrew's hand is steady and some warmth inside Aaron that he thought he had suppressed long ago, recognizes Andrew and rises up to meet him and the bubble inside, the one that always felt too big for one heart to contain, finds its anchor.


End file.
